skullgiver

@skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This used book that I bought for 12£ on the internet was apparently previously bought from Oxfam for 1.99£⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  The book is for sale for ten pounds on the Oxfam website. Looks like the ebay seller found this book in a sale or something.

  I don’t see why they can’t ask a reasonable price. They put a little time and effort into listing and posting the thing, they could’ve just recycled the thing if they were done with it, and OP could’ve looked around and gotten the book for cheaper.

  I think this mildly infuriating because OP clearly missed a good sale, but this isn’t bullshit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For security reasons⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of valid email addresses are obvious typos. steve@gmail is perfectly valid but useless in most web forms, for instance. A lot of websites drop technical compliance for the convenience of people who don’t know how email works.

  Technical compliance can also become rather annoying when you start doing things like escaping characters in quoted strings or include spaces. Practically nobody is using any of that stuff in the real life, so you rarely ever need full compliance.

  I don’t know why single character email addresses would fail that test, though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨American wanting to move abroad, what's the best bet for an registered nurse?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s unfortunate. Best of luck to you!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨American wanting to move abroad, what's the best bet for an registered nurse?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t want to dash your hopes of emigrating to a better country, but don’t underestimate how painful emigration can be. You can’t just pick a country and move there. Moving countries is not like moving states. You’ll need to convince the country you’re going that you’re worth letting in. If I were you, I’d start with a list of countries that might be willing to let you in, and work your way down from there.

  I would suggest Europe, the Nordics in particular; the Nordics are some of the best countries to live in in the entire world, with (in my opinion) rather pleasant politics in comparison. Germany and other north-western countries tend to score well too, but you’ll have to look into how much they match your ideals and culture. Europe is generally on pretty good terms with the USA, which helps a lot. However, you’re not alone in wanting to move there. Don’t be surprised if the process of applying for permission to enter the country takes months to years and several thousand dollars in paperwork, time and money you don’t get back if you’re refused. Things can go a bit smoother if you’ve got a claim on citizenship by blood or family history, but that too can take time and paperwork to arrange, and is entirely dependent on the current laws in the countries your ancestors are from.

  In many countries, being a highly skilled worker gives you a major advantage. However, your nursing education may not be accredited in other countries, or be considered “highly skilled” enough; with some bad luck, you may need to go back to school in your country of choice to get your education revalidated (if you’re let in for that). The same goes for driver’s licenses and certifications you may have achieved over the years.

  One trick you may be able to use if you’re of European descent is getting European citizenship by blood (I believe Italy, Spain, and a bunch of other countries allow for this) and then use the freedom the Schengen accords provide to move elsewhere in Europe, skipping a whole lot of paperwork. This way, you can, for example, work in Denmark without needing to go through the strict Danish immigration system (though validating your education may still need work).

  Just as an example: if you want to apply for a license for a general nurse in Norway as a non-EEA citizen, processing time takes at least 11 months if you provide all the required paperwork and costs $152 to file (which you don’t get back if you’re refused). You need a license to be a general nurse; without a license, you can’t do your job. Without a job, you can’t just move there; you can get a temporary holiday visa but you can’t apply for jobs with that. This is on top of the other requirements, like speaking B2 level Norwegian. If you apply, you may be given a deadline to conform with the requirements.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This laptop was MADE to be HACKED!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think regulated 18650 cells is a problem, but most users don’t know the difference. With every other laptop, you can pop out a battery and replace it with a model with the same part number, but with 18650 cells that’s a lot harder to accomplish. I’d rather see them “package” a bunch of 18650 cells together with its own part number and lets the people who know how batteries work figure out how to add their own cells (anyone with background knowledge will recognise the pack configuration the moment they take out the screws!)

  I don’t know about M4, but with the M3 Apple’s compute-per-watt was already behind some AMD and Intel chips (if you buy hardware from the same business segment, no budget i3 is beating a Macbook any time soon). The problem with AMD and Intel is that they deliver better performance, at the cost of a higher minimum power draw. Apple’s chips can go down to something ridiculous like 1W power consumption, while the competition is at a multiple of that unless you put the chips to sleep. When it comes to amd64 software, their chips are fast enough for most use cases, but they’re nowhere close to native.

  A lot of Windows programs run on .NET, which is architecture independent, especially if they target UWP (which is more common than you might realise). The remaining applications will need porting to get decent performance, but the most important applications (browsers and Office) already work.

  Re: Windows: Windows on ARM already has a binary translator, developed in part by Qualcom, that comes pretty close to Apple’s Rosetta2 for many types of software. It’s not as complete as qemu-static is, though it is faster for the software it does support. The worst part of the translation layer is that the ARM chips made by Apple’s competitors just aren’t very fast in comparison.

  I believe Steam can distribute different binaries (there were games with x86 and amd64 binaries for a while!), but until ARM laptops with decent GPUs start coming along, I don’t expect any game devs to use features like that. Still, apparently current ARM devices can hit 50-60fps with current gen devices already, and the upcoming Snapdragon chips are supposed to compete with Apple’s CPU, so who knows!

  Microsoft already tried (and failed) to make Windows on ARM a thing before with the Surface RT. I hope they don’t go all Windows 8 over their current attempt…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Chinese network behind one of world’s ‘largest online scams’: Vast web of fake shops touting designer brands took money and personal details from 800,000 people in Europe and US, data suggests⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  In my experience, the AE customer support is quite customer friendly in its business. I don’t trust these stores for anything important, but when I need cheap shit, I tend to use AE to buy it from the source rather than spend three times as much on a local drop shipper.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This laptop was MADE to be HACKED!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Messing with 18650s is rather risky, I’m not sure if exposing them as individual cells is a good idea. I hope the company is smart enough to put a “if you burn your house down replacing the batteries, we’re only liable if we sent you the replacement” clause in their sales contract or they’ll be sued into the ground if this thing ever takes off.

  As for ARM+games: with tools like Box64 you can get some impressive performance out of 3D games assuming your GPU is supported. The native code of the game will be running translated, but the expensive calls to 3D engines and such will all be caught and replaced by native ARM libraries. I doubt you’ll be running Cyberpunk on this thing, but don’t count it out just because of the translation step.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[META] Never change, lemmy.ml⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Criticism of communism on Lemmy is like criticising the far right on Truth Social. Whether or arguments are good or not (“communists are basically nazis” just isn’t true), you’re criticising ideals on a platform mostly set up for people disenfranchised for those ideals.

  While I don’t exactly agree with your comment, I find it quite ridiculous that your comment was removed. Just let the downvotes do their job, this didn’t need mod intervention.

  It’s quite unfortunate that so many normal people and communities have concentrated on .ml, unlike Lemmygrad you can’t really defederate .ml without missing out on valuable interaction.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Its most common use case is interrupting games⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Read the popup dialogue next time. It tells you what Sticky Keys is for and how to disable the trigger if you don’t want it.

  Or go to settings > accessibility > sticky keys > “keyboard shortcut for sticky keys”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Its most common use case is interrupting games⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Various diseases and disabilities.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This Captcha⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, if you misinterpret this question, you’ll probably get the next one. The important thing about these is that you shouldn’t overthink them, they’re not worth the mental effort and they don’t expect serious dedication from you anyway.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This Captcha⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The nuance is the entire point of the CAPTCHA. It’s not really hard to go “inside warmer than snowy outside” but I imagine whole groups of neurodivergent people will be getting locked out by these.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This Captcha⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is exactly the type of thing a bot sucks at. Training image recognition or text recognition is trivial. Training concepts such as perceived temperature requires state of the art LLMs.

  This isn’t the only question, of course. It’ll stick around until bots are trained for temperature. Then it’ll ask “which of these would make a good picnic spot” or “which of these are big enough to contain an apple”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This Captcha⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  To kick out bots. AI can bypass normal CAPTCHAs better than humans can, so “select the traffic light” and “type these letters” won’t work anymore.

  Now CAPTCHAs are becoming a test in actual mental capacity.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨this⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  User friendly CAPTCHAs have been defeated. Current technology relies on extensive fingerprinting but if you want to take out bots using that, you’ll also be taking out anyone not on Windows 10+/macOS with GPU drivers installed and no fingerprint resistence.

  “Type these letters” is no longer a good filter. Neither is basic math or recognising words. Even these dice games can be done by ChatGPT just fine once you bypass the “I can’t do CAPTCHAs” limitation that they put in front of it.

  We used to be able to make CAPTCHAs just slightly more difficult. Add in some colours, blur the edges some more, use different fonts. That’s no longer an option; CAPTCHAs need to be increased in cognitive complexity instead.

  This is a huge problem. As AI becomes more advanced, more disabled people will start losing access to services because they can’t get through the CAPTCHAs. Audio transcription AI is becoming more advanced by the month and I expect audio CAPTCHAs to soon become unusable. These more complex puzzles, which AI can’t automatically describe, will also cause sighted and mentally disabled people to lose access. The days of CAPTCHAs are soon over.

  I can see three solutions for this, and all of the suck donkeyballs.

  One is remote attestation tied to a hardware key (the thing Google tried to add and the thing Apple has added to Safari). Your access will be determined by your possession of real hardware. If someone hacks the manufacturer of your device and steals the keys, your access will soon be revoked. However, this requires bots to buy real devices, which makes them too costly to operate at huge scales. Running Linux or older versions of Windows/macOS will make accessing the internet impossible.

  A variant of this is the “apps for everything” outcome, where websites will stop being useful and tell you to install an app instead. Apps can do a lot more (invasive) analysis of your system, and existing DRM solutions should keep most bots out.

  Another is to just put pay walls and accounts in front of everything. No spam bot or crawler will pay a dollar for every account they need to create.

  The last one is to centralise on a few hosting providers which can use traffic analysis across many websites to determine bot status. No more VPNs, even more websites behind Cloudflare, but simple, accessible CAPTCHAs.

  The non-solution is to try and cling to CAPTCHAs. Soon CAPTCHAs will start excluding anyone under some kind of education level that’ll affect a significant portion of the population, but it’ll maintain the status quo for most neurotypical people.

  Many websites already employ a combination of these measures, and it’s only going to get worse. For general accessibility and for keeping the internet free and somewhat democratic, I’m putting my money on option one: remote attestation. Hardware trust can be implemented in free operating systems (many people will get huffy about it but I’m sure they’ll prefer it to not being able to use the internet) and older systems will take a hit, but it’s the best of the outcomes I can see.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I just want to set a timer for MY FOOD WINDOWS WHY?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ignoring the reboot doesn’t work when it’s a reboot to the Nvidia driver, as I’ve found out. The displays will work but Vulkan/OpenGL will break in confusing ways with error messages that point in the wrong direction.

  I don’t really understand why more Linux don’t hot replace the kernel, Ubuntu can do it and so can a bunch of enterprise Linux variants. I assume there’s some kind of design limitation that prevents other distros from using that API.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I just want to set a timer for MY FOOD WINDOWS WHY?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  These issues are common for people running bleeding edge Linux like me, it’s just something you accept when you use code that was finished a week ago rather than wait for it to be tested for stability for months like most Windows code.

  You don’t get that stuff on Debian/Ubuntu/Mint/Fedora, or course.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stay fresh⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Image A excellent shit post

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I just want to set a timer for MY FOOD WINDOWS WHY?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You say that, but Discord will happily refuse to open until you download the latest .deb file from their website, and it’s one of the friendlier Electron applications in terms of in-window updating in my experience.

  I had to disable my adblock to get the Teams application to show me a button I needed at some point…

  One interesting thing I’ve heard from people I’ve introduced into Linux is that you need to reboot an awful lot. It has to do with automatic security updates triggering a reboot-required flag, but every other day I get a popup with “updates were installed, you should reboot”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I just want to set a timer for MY FOOD WINDOWS WHY?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t remember any version of Windows I actively use ever auto updating for me either, but that’s because I turned that shit off myself. I had a test VM reboot itself at some point, but it recovered itself perfectly so I only noticed it because the open Firefox tabs all appeared to have unloaded by themselves.

  You don’t need to know any programming languages to use Linux, and if you’re a nornal computer user and buy a Mac you don’t need to compile anything either. You’re also free from Microsoft’s stupid advertising and Edge sabotage.

  I’ll have you know the reason why my laptop didn’t display over a dock isn’t because of bingbong-SDK, but rather because Linux 6.1 altered a kernel API that evdi 1.14 didn’t support, hence breaking the DisplayLink driver written by Synaptic, thank you very much. But yeah, this stuff does happen occasionally and it sucks. But hey, the problem wasn’t Nvidia’s terrible software for once!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How are 144hz screen possible?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Of course, and that’s why European Youtubers will sometimes upload video in 4k@50fps (because the grid frequency in Europe is 50Hz instead, and that’s what a lot of cameras are configured for to prevent banding).

  Syncing with the power grid is one of those great ideas that lead to some very silly side effects, like that time the grid frequency in Europe sagged for a while and everyone’s alarm clocks started drifting. Grid operators increased the frequency slightly over the following months to correct the clocks as well, so if you adjusted your alarm clock you’d need to adjust it again!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How are 144hz screen possible?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The 60 rule is actually based on a 59.97 rule and it’s not really a rule, just a standard that stuck around. What’s better than 60? Two times 60! What’s better than two times 60? Four times sixty!

  With VRR you can run certain screens that get sold right now at exactly 91.3 fps if you want, it’s just extremely unpractical.

  CRT monitors actually used to run at higher refresh rates (120Hz CRTs came way before anything close to flat panels were introduced) but the shitty limitations of the first ten years of flat panels changed the way displays were used and marketed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Restaurant Bill⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There is no “EU” culture about any of this. Every country has its own culture and acceptable ideas. All I know is that you have to be made aware of any surcharges before they’re applied, but I’m pretty sure things work exactly the same in America.

  I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d find random hospitality surcharges when you walk into a random restaurant in Amsterdam or Paris. What are you going to do, sue the restaurant? Call the cops? As much as I like living here, it’s not like this is some kind of utopia where scummy businesses don’t exist and where the government always enforces customer protection laws everywhere.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Restaurant Bill⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve only come across it in ex-Soviet European countries, but every country is different of course. Tourist traps also like adding fees and surcharges but I don’t think they do it for the same reason.

  I remember something about tipping bring associated with bribes getting mentioned in a documentary I watched years ago, but i can’t even begin to remember what documentary that was, let alone find a link to it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Restaurant Bill⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think so, as long as the fee is made clear before getting the bill (e.g. indicated on the menus and signs outside). It’s definitely legal in Europe, assuming you were warned beforehand. It’s very common in some European countries (while entirely nonexistent in others).

  In countries where tipping isn’t traditionally acceptable (like in places where it’s associated with bribing), service surcharge often replace the tipping. Charging a service surcharge and then suggesting a tip is ridiculous though.

  I simply wouldn’t tip after that surcharge, but then again I’m European.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Taking self-appreciation to the next level⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Based on the original article the guy left a trail of destruction. Clearly has no idea how to properly cut or maintain hedges.

  The original article mentions at least one address, and based on Streetview from two years ago I don’t get the impression that these people don’t maintain their hedges at all. There are clear signs of work having been done either by people who have been doing so for a while or by some kind of landscaping company.

  To me, this looks more like a “bored, grumpy old man destroys peoples’ hedges” story.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Taking self-appreciation to the next level⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re going for some kind of moral victory, don’t kill the plant. Go to the council or whatever authority is relevant in your area and force the owners to take care of their shit through legal means. There’s probably some kind of accessibility law you can press to clear the curb of tree branches.

  Cutting up random people’s plants is an excellent way to run head first into tree law. Replacing these plants isn’t cheap. The guy did extensive damage to a bunch of hedges with no warning or communication beforehand, and got angry when approached.

  If you’re going to risk breaking tree laws, at least don’t put your name and picture in the news.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gonna be a great day!⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I like the idea behind decentralised currency and I value the ideals of those wanting to free themselves from the four or five financial institutions controlling the world, but the people who want to buy groceries with their Bitcoin are a tiny minority. Cryptocurrency has become a vessel for speculation, fraud, and money laundering, abusing the good intentions of its inventors.

  During the Bitcoin hype, some online stores actually started taking cryptocurrency as payment, but few stores still have that option available. For a sweet, short period there was a glimpse of hope for cryptocurrency, but that quickly collapsed.

  Your first point accentuates that there are too many options to transfer blockchain money for most normal people. Living in a place where payment terminals in supermarkets don’t accept credit cards (debit card based culture) and where banks decided to go with Maestro rather than Mastercard, I can tell you from experience that “you need to pay with a different thing here” will confuse the hell out of people.

  Your second point is actually the problem behind cryptocurrency that’ll make it impossible to use as a real currency. There are no control mechanisms, so the value jumps around wildly. You’d be smart to store your money through cryptocurrencies in countries with explosive inflation (Argentina, Turkey) but when a country’s currency starts to collapse, limits to exchanging money are often the first policies to get inflation back under control, so there’s a real risk you’ll end up unable to access your money because banks suddenly refuse to take your return transfer.

  Your third point is kind of invalidated by the fact you default to naming Lightning as your primary fast transaction mechanism, since it operates on Bitcoin which is stuck in the PoW world and probably always will be. It’s major competitor Ethereum is kind of okay these days, but gas prices make it useless for doing any real payments so you’ll end up using some kind of wrapper for that too.

  You can’t compare a form of government to a product, so I’m not sure what the democracy argument is about.

  And let’s be honest, for mainstream consumers, the Linux desktop and the Fediverse are failures. How many of your real life friends and family have a Lemmy account compared to Facebook or Twitter? Even within my tech nerd bubble most people stick with mainstream services and mainstream operating systems. The best thing to happen to the Linux desktop was Valve picking it up and stuffing it into a console. Android deserves an honorable mention, but they way that got Linux into the mainstream was to hide Linux as much as possible. Twitter started collapsing and Bluesky and fucking Threads ate Mastodon’s lunch. The Fediverse sure has grown, but unless you’re into Linux or computers, you won’t find a Twitter or even Reddit alternative here.

  Even still, I myself can get my social media itch scratched by the Fediverse, but I still can’t pay for my groceries through Dogecoin or Lightning or Ethereum.

  There are also reasons why I’m not planning on using an iteration of cryptocurrency for real life finances even if such a thing becomes available. Most importantly, the public payment history associated with wallets. It’s not exactly difficult to link wallets to companies once they start operating at larger scales and soon enough you’ll have companies selling your payment history (and wage/employer history) straight off the blockchain. Unfortunately, that’s not really something that can be fixed with the current model.

  There’s also the theft problem: if someone steals my bank account details and uses it to transfer all of my money to a foreign country, my bank will lock down my account and probably call me. Steal my wallet seed phrase and everything is gone in an instant, with no recourse. This adds major risk to keeping any significant amount of money in cryptocurrency form, and both enthusiasts and professionals have lost millions upon billions this way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They won't teach you this in Drivers Ed⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  To perform an emergency stop (or a full stop in general, I suppose). The picture shows the brake pedal and the clutch pedal being pressed, not the gas and the brakes; you can see the accelerator to the right.

  If you don’t free the clutch while coming to a stop, you’ll probably damage your car. This is especially important in scenarios where you can’t reliably shift down fast enough to keep up with the car’s deceleration, for example when doing an emergency stop.

  In normal braking scenarios you probably want to keep the clutch engaged until you hit a low RPM (where the engine running without acceleration is trying to accelerate the car, rather than braking on engine power alone). That way, if you need to accelerate to evade, you can do so quickly without connecting the clutch first.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They won't teach you this in Drivers Ed⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  When coming to a full stop, you may as well, but you could also put the car into neutral for the last bit of braking. Depressing the clutch allows you to quickly get back to driving again (in case you need to respond to traffic around you) but when you’re parking on a driveway you don’t really need that kind of response.